19
TIGERFISH


Tigerfish have a reputation for being one of the best fighters of the fresh water species you can catch. Yes they are scrappers and provide some fantastic aerial displays at hook up, almost akin to a Tarpon leaping, although on a much smaller scale. We are not freshwater fishermen and decided to see what these Tigerfish were like. Preparing our tackle before we left, we scaled down to what we considered o be 'freshwater' sizes, no way these large Tigerfish like a big meal. As Victor our guide said, 'small fish take small baits, big fish take big baits'. How right he was. Victor has been working an Impalila Lodge for 9 years and is their top fishing guide, and he also holds the Lodge record for a Tigerfish at 9.7kg. Now, there is a challenge for anyone. We had an option for the Tigerfish fishing, look for the big ones or go after large numbers of small ones. Big fish sounded more interesting and in the end proved to be the best challenge we could have had.

We had two full days fishing for Tigers and the following pictures hopefully tell our story.

We left the Lodge shortly after breakfast each morning, about 7am and after catching a few Tillapia just to warm us up, it was off chasing Tigers…..

With the wind conditions that we had on the first day, Victor suggested that the fishing would not be so good, but the Tigerfish would start to feed strongly about midday, so we accepted the 'warm up' fishing for Tillapia.

One of the other boats steaming away
Tillapia
Jeri with a 7.5kg Tiger
Local Village
Jeri with a 8.5kg Tiger


Tiger on the lure
Sue with a 7.8kg Tiger - complete with broken rod!
Tiger on the lure
Sue with a 6.8kg Tiger
Jeri with a 7.5kg Tiger


One of the things Sue must remember is to give line when the Tigerfsh is in the boat, otherwise, you hear this ping ping as the top two sections of her rod snapped. No more fishing for Sue that day. The Lodge have a supply of rods and lent Sue a replacement rod with all the usual comments about not breaking it.

Jeri and Sue were using light tackle to catch the Tigerfish, 4 & 6kg line, and this was making for some amazing sport and putting a good bend in the rod.
Our island beach for lunch
Jeri with Tiger 8.2kg
Sue with a 4.5kg Tiger
Sue with a 7.5kg Tiger


As we have said Victor holds the Lodge record at 9.7kg for a Tigerfish, so with the better weather conditions during our second day, we asked Victor of the prospects of finding the 10kg Tigerfish. This was not to be, however Jeri did achieve 9.5kg.



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